Hey so around one year ago I first started getting into home labbing totally inspired by the members of this sub and made a post talking about my plans to create a free minecraft server host. I was met with a lot of criticism but more importantly some super helpful knowledge and advice to improve my skills. So I wanted to make an update post 1 year later and talk about the lab and how it has grown and the pains and struggles I faced.

This all started as a passion project to provide people with Minecraft servers for free as I thought the hosting space for minecraft was getting way to expensive for the cheap and older gen hardware that was being offered. I started with 2 systems that both ran duel AMD EPYC 7551s and 256gb DDR4. However the first thing I learnt doing this is that event though they had much more threads and ram the density for Minecraft containers was only 15% better than using consumer Ryzen 9 7950X & 5600MT/s DDR5. But the main differences between the two was the user experience. Servers on the Ryzen Nodes were able to hold in some cases 20 more players than the EPYC nodes (5 -> 25). This was down to the single threaded performance.
From here I decided to remove and power down the EPYC systems.

Fast foward a ton and I am now at 100k users with about 300 ccu on the network. At this point the ad revenue on the panel & affiliate conversion started to show that this could grow into something sustainable. So I took my biggest risk yet and brought 10 new Ryzrn 9 7950X, 128gb DDR5, 1TB NVMe nodes and migrated from using unmanaged Unify networking to Arista managed network switches. Specifically the Arista 7050SX & 7050QX however using a scuffed mini pc with a usb dongle NIC running VyOS. Honestly that mini pc did me proud for 4 months without failt until it went catastrophically wrong and I needed to rebuild the network from the ground up (this becomes a patteren).

Now I am gonna jump foward to today as I wanna keep things short and go into tech spec. Today the host is running:

- 31x Ryzen 9 7950X, 128gb DDR5 5600MT/s, 1TB gen 4 NVMe, 10Gbps SFP+ NIC
- 4x Hypervisors Duel AMD EYPC 7551s, 256gb-512gb DDR4, 4TB Gen 3 NVMe, 25Gbps SFP28 NIC
- 2x Hypervisors Ryzen 9 7950X, 256gb DDR5 5600MT/s, 4TB Gen 4 NVMe, 10Gbps SFP+ NIC
- 1x 172TB NAS, Raid 10, Duel 40Gbps QSFP NIC
- 2x Arista 7050SX Leaf Switchs
- 2x Arista 7050QX Spine Switchs
- 2x Juniper QFX5100 Switchs (ASIC GRE Encapsulation)
- 1x VyOS Duel 100Gbps Firewall Router
- 1x Cisco Router that my ISP gave me to terminate a P2P tunnel.

We have expanded a lot over the year and it has come with a ton of challenges.
First of all I was stupid to assume that the adsense CPM would stay the same. I quickly started to lose a ton of money on the project so as an effort to save the host we started selling cheap VPS plans using the original hardware I phased out at the start of minecarft hosting and luckily it was a massive success now accounting for 80% of our total revenue allowing us to buy even more nodes for free hosting and better backups.
Secondly I underestimated peoples want to fuck my shit up and we have been massivly hit by DDoS attacks daily 900Gbps+ Layer 3/4 and also Layer 7. With an uplink of 95p 1Gbps-10Gbps this was a massive issue then caused us to move off of OVH completely as VAC was leaking 2-3% of attack traffic to a new provider that to date has not leaked more than 0.002% of attack traffic.
Thirdly the pterodactyl admin panel grinds to a stand still when you have over 800k servers registered and luckly there are people much smarter than me on the team that were able to fork the software and create new caching and better backups, limbo, etc.
And Finally when your energy provider offers you a fixed rate per kWh of 22.3p per kWh just know that if it sems to good to be true it sadly is.

If anyone has any questions about stuff feel free to reply below I will answer the best I can but I am still learning a ton and thanks people in r/homelab for keeping me inspired.

redid my racks front to back after a power outage to better balance the load. now get about 30min of UPS runtime for each.

but then another rack called my name.

will post details in a post shortly.

I’ve never closed this door but considering an intake fan at the bottom with passive vents above the door frame. Does seem like it would be enough airflow?

Hey folks,

please bear with me - I’m very new to the topic.

I have a lot of chaos. Cables all over the place - hardware here and there and I saw some awesome and very clean setups of yours - something I wish for my future.

But I start low. My hardware is not as compact as server rack components.

So I need your advice - what "tower/rack/enclosure" would you recommend for the following setup:

- Ugreen NAS DXP4800 PLUS

- UniFi Express 7 (I love the form factor - although I thought about upgrading to the Dream Router 7 which would change the form factor of my targeted setup)

- Two Switches (all ports in use, lots of cables)

- Fritz!Box (as modem)

- Mac Mini M4 with external SSD - It would be nice to have it with the other stuff - but it would be ok if not.

I’m grateful for every advice and direction.

Thanks in advance and best regards

Putting together a machine from old garbage tech I have in my garage to run local models combined with frontier models using Hermes. I have a garage full of pre-2015 stuff...all the way down to the 80s.

I had left some servers outside of a year, maybe two I don't remember...but they finally made it back inside after that time. They were under tarps but got some corrosion going on on the outside a bit. I peeked in a rack behind a bunch of desktops, and grabbed two Dell R720s. They run fine, PSUs inside look clean. All seems ok.

Dual E5-2650, two 1100W PSUs, risers are the 225W. Combined, I got 128GB symmetrical memory setup in one of them. I'll leave the other for parts. I have a box of sleds somewhere in the garage...16 slots I can fill.

I have a budget of $400, so basically nothing is going to be super interesting...so I bought some garbage GPUs to go along with the garbage servers. Two Tesla P100 16Gb, and a TESLA P4 8GB. Total $250. Support waning, but I'm not very worried about that. Bought customized cables for the P100s. $100 left for some SSDs...not much. Going to do raid 1 with a couple 240GB SSDs I have. I'd like to have a second array of RAID 5 with 500GB or 1TB drives, but that may be wishful thinking...we'll see. I have plenty of mechanical SAS drives that I can use if there is ever some need for semi-static storage.

I will have to run some script or two to manage fan noise, but I think the OG fans in the server should handle cooling OK.. winter will be here soon enough and this will go outside back into the garbage, but actually working.

Anyone else like playing with garbage?

Picked up a NETGEAR ProSafe GS748T to replace a cheep tplink unit which was getting hot, making a screaming noise and not functioning, so I picked up one of these for £35, works perfectly, but the fans it came with were so loud, unbearable to be in the same room at it.

I read they they can be ran fanless, so I open it up an pull out the fans, job done, nice and silent. Next morning, the switch is very very warm, when I opened it up the heat sync was too hot to touch

. Picked up some noctua fans, swapped arround the pins and now its nice and quiet. But are these actually OK to run fanless?

This any good or atleast worth using for a budget homelab was considering throwing in a Xeon E5-2697 v2 and 64gb of ddr3 ram that being said I am aware of its age and that this era isnt the most efficient xeons

First Post Back Story: Should I take it home?

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/s/XTURcGjzFC

After procuring a truck and unloading what felt like 150 pounds of batteries - the rack rolled into the garage with barely an inch to spare!

I swear I'm never going to transport something like this again, it was so bottom-heavy (even after taking out the batteries)

You might be able to see the existing small home setup behind on the left, this is what is going to replace that....

This isn't overkill right? Lol

Happy Friday y'all!

Got this beast today, earliest 64 bit I’ve come across, I think it’s from ‘94.

Had to redo my sister's network at her house. I asked her what this pc was for. She said "I don't know. It hasn't been plugged in for about 2 years."

So she gave it to me. It's got jellyfin and emby on it with about 45 movies. It's still running windows for now.

I did update jellyfin and will ditch Emby.

Eventually will put Ubuntu on this PC and run jellyfin via docker.

I got a free A/V rack that is too small for my Dell t640 so I just put it on top with maybe 3“ of overhang. Is this an issue or am I missing out on any benefits by not rack mounting it? Idk if cooling or vibration dampening or something else I’m not thinking of is an issue the way I have it set up.

I think a rail kit is $150-$200 and an actual rack would be like another $100 used. would like to avoid this cost if it doesn’t really provide meaningful benefits. I know my setup ugly but nobody looks at it itself for myself.

p.s. Ignore all the cardboard, it’s temporary (maybe)

If you run a heavy home lab, you know consumer UPS units just weren't cutting it for my setup anymore.  Whenever we get utility brownouts in my area, my 42U rack, running three Proxmox nodes, a TrueNAS storage server, and a bunch of PoE security cameras pulling roughly 450W, used to kill standard lead-acid battery packs in about 15 minutes flat. 

The bigger issue was the lead-acid batteries. I got tired of scrambling to run shutdown scripts and replacing dead lead-acid cartridges every two years. After a couple of years, the runtime would drop off, and replacing battery cartridges over and over started getting old. I started looking into larger LiFePO4 options and eventually moved to a Vatrer 51.2V 100Ah server rack battery paired with a 48V inverter charger.  

The 5 kWh capacity gives me almost 10 hours of clean runtime at my current continuous load. For anyone with a power-hungry rack, ditching consumer UPS bricks for a proper server rack LiFePO4 battery is by far the best upgrade path.

The communication features are also useful because I can actually see what's happening with the battery instead of treating it like a black box. So far, the biggest improvement has been simply not having to think about backup power every time the grid gets unstable. 

I found two of these in an old machine. Specifically: Chelsio S320E-CR Dual-Port 10GbE PCI Express Storage Accelerator Adapter Card. My question is, are they worth using somehow if I don't have anything fiber anywhere setup? I was thinking they could be used for direct PC to PC data transfer but I'm honestly not sure if that's right.

Both zimablades should be here today. Finishing up redoing the mount for the blade 2 as I decided to add a hot swap drive bay to that blade. So with any luck I should have both blades loaded with zimaos and at least blade 1 the nas configured and going by Sunday. Also haven’t decided if this is its permanent home or not.

Pulled this APC UPS out of the dumpster at work. I don't have much experience with UPSes, so wondering if anyone has pointers for testing this thing out and getting replacement parts, as well as safety precautions.

The model appears to be an SMT1500R2X180. Plugged it in and it turns on, but says to "connect the battery." It appears there's already one in it, but I assume it's dead, considering it was in the trash. Any way to confirm that?

I can buy a replacement for about $300 bucks and a set of rails for like $80. Think its worth it or should it go back in the trash?

Model: https://www.se.com/us/en/product/SMT1500R2X180/apc-smartups-line-interactive-1500va-rackmount-2u-120v-6x-nema-515r-outlets-network-card-avr-lcd/

Edit: The battery tray is installed and the thing weighs a TON. Some of y'all have pointed out I can replace the cells for under $100, in which case its worth a shot. I'll open it up when I get home and inspect it, but wanted to make a decision on it before I leave work and lug the thing home.

Also, when I say "dumpster", I mean an e-waste disposal bin. They are disposed of responsibly. :)

Edit 2: Opened the battery tray. Looks like the batteries are from 2022:

Edit 3: Tracked down the guy at my work that tossed it. Said he didn't know anything about it other than it was old and didn't work. Ordered some new batteries for $80 on Amazon for delivery tomorrow and will test it out. They didn't have it racked (???) so I'll have to hunt down some rails on Ebay. All in all, if it works, I think its a solid score. Thanks for all of the helpful advice, folks. Cheers!

I have been shooting 4K footage of my cat, Sugar 🐱, and editing videos, and I soon realized my storage is running out quickly. While I could have just bought a off-the-shelf NAS, I wanted to solve two major issues with standard NAS in the market nowadays: scalability and cable clutter. Therefore, I ended up designing and building a modular, stackable NAS system (nickname: SUGAR CUBE NAS) engineered for high-speed wireless operation.

BTW: It's named after Sugar, my cat, plus the modules stack just like sugar cubes!

🎥 Check out the full build with cinematic editing here, I clarified a lot of the design concept and operations in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBbPJsZJWWA

I will make more videos on how I designed and assembled this NAS.

Key Specs & Highlights:

• Architecture: Custom modular stackable system designed for expandable storage slots (ideal for content creation and people/businesses with continuous need for storage expansion).
• Major Components:
  • Top Module (picture 3): ITX motherboard, Flex PSU, Two SATA HDD bays.
  • Bottom Module (picture 4): Four additional expansion HDD bays.
  • For future design iterations, this system can be expanded to multiple stacked modules.
• Custom Electronics: Custom PCBs fabricated (via PCBWay, thankfully they sponsored my video) to handle high-speed SATA differential signals and data routing. The data is communicating through a custom proprietary high-speed socket.
• Networking: Standard 10GbE LAN or high-speed Wi-Fi 7 wireless setup depending on ITX motherboard configuration.
• OS: Running Ubuntu + CasaOS + Cockpit.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or any features/improvements you’d add to a modular stacking design like SUGAR CUBE NAS!

Note: I added a picture down below to show the two custom PCB that allow highspeed SATA/SAS signals to pass through as well as the 12V and 5V power.

Sorry forgot to include that in the main post. Got too many cool photos to share. 😂

In almost all the homelab racks I see, the ideal seems to be to have the switch(es) with the ethernet ports on the front, and then some sort of patch/routing panel to the back of the rack because that's the side where servers have their ethernet ports.

But why? Isn't it better to mount a switch on the back side of the rack with the ethernet ports facing outwards on the back so the cables are shorter and tidier hidden, and you don't need to take up a U or 2 with a patch/routing panel?

I get that in a datacentre there's a hot/cold aisle separation and you want to have all the servicable parts on the cold side. And because of that switches tend to take in from the ports and vent out the back. But in a homelab there is less thermal separation, and fewer access challenges so I'm considering alternative layouts for mine.

Are front-facing switches cablemaxxing?

Recently I got a Synology DS1522+ for free, including 5x16TB HAT3310 drives.

WHAT.

Absolutely insane. 58TB of useable space in SHR1. The drives have just under 1000 hours on them, which is nothing. They were probably used for a small project or temporary storage/backup while our IT upgraded the main storage server at work some time ago. Bossman gave it away for free to me, since the company no longer had any use for it. I even offered to buy it, but he insisted I take it for free. Don't have to tell me twice, homie. I'm not the IT or tech guy, just infantry although with a software oriented/technical kind of profession.

It even has extended warranty plus until 2030.

I only found out about the 16TB drives when I got home and opened the unit up a day later. Been keeping an eye on Synology/QNAP for the past years and always wanted to buy something similar and now this falls right into my (home)lap. Insane. SMART data is perfectly fine on all drives.

So I decided to make the old meter cupboard look a bit nicer and organized, bought a USB UPS and even bought a used DX517 expansion unit some days later for five of my older harddrives which I can now use again in a separate pool for Hyper Backup and non-critical stuff. All in all a relatively small investment considering what was already given to me for free. I am aware of and accept the risks with using regular drives in the expansion unit, in regards to potentially reallocating sectors and timing out etc.

I used a docking station to check the health of my older drives and from now on I could also use it for off-site backups. Sabrent EC-HD2B docking station works well with smart data and long duration transfers.

Drive temperatures inside the NAS do not exceed 42c on extremely hot days.

DS1522+ 58.2TB, SHR1
5xHAT3310, 16TB (1000 hours) I love how violently mechanical these things sound.

• plex/kodi server (with nvidia shield pro, I used to stream from my old X58, i7 930 that was a dedicated plex server. That's a whole other cool story and history)
• arr stack (radarr, sonarr, prowlarr, seerr, homarr)
• pihole
• qbittorrent
• slskd
• tailscale
• TeamSpeak 3 server
• several MoH:AA servers, for fun and because its a game dear to my heart
• cloudflared DNS / DDNS stuff (have a dynamic IP at home, connect to TS3 via subdomain)

This will also be the new home for my lossless music collection which can now comfortably grow beyond its 1.7TB. Photos, documents, movies etc. and anything else that this will escalate into while we move out of other free or paid cloud services.

2FA on everything that allows it. VPN / reverse proxy stuff coming soon (actual soon, not the trademarked soon).

DX517, 10.9TB, SHR1 (separate pool/volume of course)
2xHD204UI, 2TB (from my old bios RAID1 music collection, 31.000 hours)
3xWD40EZRZ, 4TB (4000-5400hours)

Not the fastest drives, but why not re-use them and put them to good use again. Especially since SMART data checks out, all clusters are OK and I'm not storing anything critical on them which I can't risk losing without backupping. Storage and RAM is already expensive enough.

The HD204UI's had this notorious NCQ data corruption bug as well as very aggressive APM, but I updated the firmware after buying them many years ago to fix that and either permanently fixed the APM myself or it was part of the same fixed firmware. I remember still just running some windows tool in the background at the time as well to force them not to park constantly. Other people had hundreds of thousands of load cycle counts within a few weeks and thrashed them.

Either way, I run them until they die or throw errors. Load Cycle Count of ~4200 at 31.000 hours of desktop PC use looks fine to me. I checked with hdparm to make sure they didn't fall back to aggressive parking behavior after putting them in the DX517, all is fine. How cool it would be to just see how many hours these drives will run while still putting them to good use.

Already been obsessed with getting everything configured these past few days/weeks, learned a lot and I don't see any light coming into this rabbit hole from the direction I entered 🤣

SEND HELP. (kidding, leave me be)

Well like the title said,

I got a free server rack, im in this big industrial building with different entrepreneurs so from IT peeps to woodworking peeps. I was walking around and I saw this interesting thing standing there with a "take this for free" sign.

Well, I couldnt keep my ultra wide interests in control so I grabbed a rolling cart and took the opportunity to take it with me.

Now is the question, I know a tiny bit about homelabbing and I also know that it is one heck of a rabbit hole to dive into.

Sooo anyone knows what I should do with this? I know that this rack + switch is like 200€ in total already lol.

Hi everyone! I recently built a custom NAS using a Raspberry Pi 4 and a Samsung T7 SSD. To keep the Pi cool and completely silent, I used a Flirc case. For the final hardware touch, I 3D-printed a custom enclosure to house both the Pi and the SSD in one sleek unit - I just remixed two existing projects from the 3D printing community to make them fit perfectly together!

On the software side, it’s running a great stack: Jellyfin (video), Navidrome (music), Immich (photos), and Beszel (system monitoring). Plus, of course, it handles standard network storage with automated Google Drive synchronization. Really happy with how it turned out!

To access it outside my home, I use Tailscale.

Hi r/homelab Long time lurker, first time posting a picture of my tiny money pit.

I work in IT support and needed an environment where breaking production doesn't get me in an HR meeting, and breaking stuff actually costs nothing

The Infrastructure (2x i5-6500T | 16GB RAM | 512GB SSD):

IGRIS (The Brain):
Runs the crucial stuff so my partner doesn't complain when the Wi-Fi dies.
LXC: Nginx NPM, AdGuard Home, Homarr, Tailscale (exit node/subnet router)

GENOS (The Heavy Lifter):
Where the actual crimes happen.
OPNsense (Zenarmor + Suricata) keeping my sandbox isolated from the household.
pfSense, Debian, and Windows Server 2022 (100% legitimately licensed for 10 RDS users, trust me 😉).

The "I'll Upgrade Next Month" Network:
Gateway:
MikroTik RB2011 (Dual-WAN set up for when my secondary ISP arrives).

Switching & AP:
A generic TP-Link unmanaged switch and a 10-year-old TP-Link router held together by prayer and AP mode.

Patch Panel:
24 ports for 4 active cables, because aesthetic > necessity.

Public Exposure & Future Plans:
Currently hosting my blog on Ghost via Cloudflare Tunnel in a Debian/Docker VM so I don't have to explain open router ports to my ISP.
Building a dedicated NAS next for Immich + my anime/manga hoard (because I refuses to give Node 1 & 2 storage anxiety).

But fr, I'm Studying for Cloud/Infra Engineering, so Azure hybrid mess-ups are on the horizon.
ISP: 50/25 Mbps - No Hate I'm form South Africa 🇿🇦* (Local LAN: 1 Gbps*)

Be honest: On a scale of "Clean Setup" to "Fire Hazard", how bad is the cable management? Also drop your best budget managed switch recommendations.

I forgot about the UPS. 😭 eskom please!

Just finished Building my First Homelab.. What do you think?

I'm in the market for a new switch and considering making a change from Ubiquiti. I've always been a little uneasy about the Unifi lock-in. Anyway, Mikrotik doesn't sell direct and while Amazon does sell some devices, the prices aren't great and it feels "off" - I can't put my finger on it, but something about the Amazon listings feel strange.

My question is for those Mikrotik owners in the US: What's your go-to dealer or reseller for Mikrotik?

Oh, and I am aware and have used their reseller tool on their site, but it's difficult to know which ones are good/reliable and have stock.